Lexington, Kentucky

Lexington, the seat of
Fayette county,
was named in 1775 for the Battle of Lexington (Massachusetts) by explorers camped at
McConnell Springs near the Town Branch of
South Elkhorn Creek,
west of what is now downtown Lexington. Permanent settlers began arriving in 1779 and
the town was officially established by the Virginia Assembly in 1782. The Lexington post
office opened in 1794 and the town was incorporated in 1831.

In 1974 the city and county governments merged to form the
Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.
An Urban Services Area boundary separates the urban center of the county from
the surrounding rural area. The population of Lexington-Fayette County in 2010 was
295,803.

From Timothy Flint's
Recollections of the Last Ten Years
(1826)

Lexington is situated in the centre of what the Kentuckians affirm to be
the finest body of land in the world. I believe no country can show finer
upland; and for a great distance from the town, plantation adjoins
plantation, in all directions... There is a balance in conveniences and
defects, appended to all earthly paradises. But when the first emigrants
entered this country, in its surface so gently waving, with such easy
undulation, so many clear limestone springs and branches, so thickly
covered with cane, with pawpaw, and a hundred species of flowering trees
and shrubs, among which fed innumerable herds of deer, and buffaloes, and
other game, as well as wild turkeys and other wild fowl, and the
delightful aspect of the country directly contrasted with the sterile
region of North Carolina, which they had left, no wonder that it appeared
to them a paradise...

Lexington is a singularly neat and pleasant town, on a little stream that
meanders through it. It is not so large and flourishing as Cincinnati,
but has an air of leisure and opulence, that distinguishes it from the
busy bustle and occupation of that town. In the circles where I visited,
literature was most commonly the topic of conversation. The window-seats
presented the blank covers of the new and most interesting publications.
The best modern works had been generally read. The university, which has
become so famous, was, even then, taking a higher standing, than the
other seminaries in the western country. There was generally an air of
ease and politeness in the social intercourse of the inhabitants of this
town, which evinced the cultivation of taste and good feeling. In effect,
Lexington has taken the tone of a literary place, and may be fitly called
the Athens of the West...

I shall have occasion elsewhere, to remark upon the moving or migratory
character of the western people generally, and of this state in
particular. Though they have generally good houses, they might almost as
well, like the Tartars, dwell in tents. Everything shifts under your eye.
The present occupants sell, pack up, depart. Strangers replace them.
Before they have gained the confidence of their neighbours they hear of a
better place, pack up, and follow their precursors.